Building the Perfect Mix: The Sum of the Parts

Years ago, I could never figure out why I was having to make so many frantic mix adjustments during the first song of the set. How could things have changed so drastically in just a few hours? Quite by accident, I figured it out.

The power of a decent audio mix is almost always built on the overall sum of many different inputs working together, not on each input standing on it's own. The trick is to not get stuck in the weeds soloing each input and fighting to make them all sound perfect. What sounded like a perfect input on its own may not be a very complimentary input when coupled with everything else. Inversely, an input that sounds great soloed may not sit right in a mix. If I'm being completely honest, most of my inputs don't sound that awe-inspiring on their own. In fact, I don't really like some of them at all—they desperately need the strength of the other inputs to achieve the power and robustness I'm going for.

For instance, my primary microphone inside the kick drum does not sound good without combining it properly with the secondary kick mic outside the drum's front air hole. The top snare mic sounds hollow and boxy without sneaking in the bottom mic to add some high end and clarity. Actually, the whole drum mix sounds quite sterile without pulling in the individual cymbal mics. The overall sounds of the kit bleeding into these adds just the right hint of flavor to keep the kit sounding like one instrument rather than eight different pieces. Drums always serve as a good example for this, but this principle applies to almost everything on stage: the top microphones on the B-3 Leslie don't sound that great without combining the bottom mic as well. The acoustic guitars don't really cut it on their own, but imbed them into the overall mix and they can really start adding some flavor to the overall product.

As you start working on the sonic character of a mix, paying attention to these certain characteristics and using them to your advantage can make dramatic differences. Such as knowing that your B-3 will sound much more full by having the proper relationship of bottom mic to top mics. It can make the whole instrument sound full and round like it was designed. Discovering and exploiting the good parts of the bass guitar and combining them properly with the kick drum inputs can make or break the entire bottom end texture of a mix. Recognize that you may need to equalize the acoustic guitar to be kind of thin sounding on it's own, but the lack of sonic depth is exactly what's needed to sit much better around the vocals. The interplay between the various sounds and musical parts are literally instrumental to how your whole mix can come together.

As you work on a mix, never forget the power of the vocal microphones. If you're not careful, they can add all kinds of "smear" to a mix that will have to be dealt with. For this reason, I generally do all my sound checks and rehearsals with live vocal mics regardless if someone is singing into them or not. The point is this: I want to work on the instrumental sounds and their relationship to the mix based around the obstacles that will be present during the actual event. Those vocal mics lined up across the front of the stage can cause some fairly gnarly ambient situations, but taming those variables early on during soundcheck vs. getting surprised later at the event is worth it. Years ago, I could never figure out why I was having to make so many frantic mix adjustments during the first song of the set. How could things have changed so drastically in just a few hours? Quite by accident, I figured out that opening all those ambient inputs during soundcheck would allow me to solve those issues earlier in the day when I had more time to figure things out.

Remember that context is everything in a mix. As more and more songs are becoming synth and keyboard driven, my mix characteristics have taken on a different tone. Even as familiar as some of those keyboard sounds are getting though, I still don't really have an opinion on them until I hear them within the context of the song. It's quite common for me to love a keyboard sound by itself only to hate it once I hear it in the song. It's almost getting to the point where I don't really want to hear a sound outside of the song—just so I don't make a judgement call based on anything less than all the information. I love that there are quite a few popular studio mix engineers who pull everything up at once and start mixing. This makes perfect sense as they've found that hearing everything together right from the start is sometimes what builds the momentum and power of the final product.

All that said, don't get me wrong and think I'm suggesting that we ignore input problems. It's still our job, moreover, our duty, to search out and resolve audio complications and issues. I'm merely suggesting a more laid-back approach in our fervency for seeking out the integrity of each input. If you solo almost any channel on the console during one of my mixes, you can find some issues. But here's the deal, no one in the room is listening to these inputs independently. The moment you listen to them as a group in the way they were designed to be heard, it all works.

Remember this, mixing in a live environment where you're harnessing mic bleed, audience sounds, room acoustics and the like in order to eek out a mix, some nuances just cease to be that significant. My opinion may or may not have some merit to your own audio situation. But at the very least, consider laying back a bit on the quest for audio input purity and embrace the reality of our live medium. You may be surprised how well it can work to your advantage.

Comments (4)

Wow am so so impressed with this write up. It's so...

Wow am so so impressed with this write up. It's so enlightening

Author: Segun onimore than 4 years ago

Based on the intro I thought the topic was going t...

Based on the intro I thought the topic was going to focus on gain structure...still, it all has to work together. To Kerry's question about the solo song, that is when you grab the EQ. Or if on a digital console, the recall function.

Author: Paul Drakemore than 4 years ago

I've been wondering about this...so I get the acou...

I've been wondering about this...so I get the acoustic guitar sounding right in the mix as a whole, not competing with anything else and am ok that it sounds a little "wonky" by itself because it serves the mix as a whole better. But what happens when the next song gets taken down to just the acoustic and vocals for the intro and verse 1? Now my acoustic that sounded fine in the full band mix sounds thin and anemic. Thoughts?

Author: Kerry Coxmore than 4 years ago

Great post, Andrew. This reminds me of a comment t...

Great post, Andrew. This reminds me of a comment that Robert Scovill made at Gurus last year. He made the point that all individual components of a song serve the mix or arrangement, and when you solo certain aspects of a song, that element (whether a guitar, bass, or whatever) may sound wonky (my word) until you hear it in the context of the mix. Same point as you, really. A great reminder. And by the way, I think the word you were looking for at the end of the article is "eke", not "eek"! :-)